Mother Hen
by Argentcoeur
Summary: A paper covered with nothing but a single confession - 'I love Tamaki' - and Haruhi is suddenly forced to pay for a secret she never meant to discover.


Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club. What, did you think I was going to add something else to that?

* * *

Soft orange light spilled from the windows into the room, creating a sunset romance setting. Alas, the day was nearing its end, and the members of the host club left yawning. They sent good-natured farewells to their lone female member, leaving her with the task of finishing the clean-up of the day's activities.

Haruhi put up minimum protest as her friends took their leave, but she couldn't bring herself to be even mildly annoyed about their attitudes; this day had been a success. The host club had hosted a surprise birthday party for a girl whose father was on a business trip, and the father had shown up in the middle of the celebration, completely brightening the girl's day.

Haruhi's mind was swept away from memories of mere hours ago when she noticed something small and black sitting on the couch. She closed the last of the curtains and picked up the lonely book. The cover was a mildly worn moleskin, the type for any kind of writer and expected to be manhandled quite a bit. The inside of the cover had the name of its owner inscribed in ballpoint pen, in impeccably neat handwriting: Kyoya Ootori. The sides of the paper were a pure white, and Haruhi had to flip through the pages with her thumb to make sure it contained writing, but fast enough so she didn't intrude on anything private.

"He must have left his notebook behind. I better get it back to him in case he needs it for something."

A slip of paper fell out from between the pages, shaken loose from her handling of it. Haruhi picked it up. A folded piece of notebook paper, torn right out of someone's notebook, the kind one would end up with when they forgot their usual note-taking paper and had to ask someone else for a replacement. Even though it seemed to have been chosen very hastily, the wrinkles were smoothed out and the page was folded neatly. Haruhi might have passed it off as a note to self about school or the host club had it not been colored over with pen and graphite.

Upon closer inspection, Haruhi's mind turned to confusion.

'I love Tamaki.'

That short sentence repeated itself again, again, again, until it filled every inch of the white space. Once pencil had filled it, pressing against the remains of unfinished calculous problems, pen wrote over it. Haruhi slowly unfolded the paper, unveiling more of the repeated proclamation, this time with little hearts replacing the dots on the i's and the periods. One giant heart encircled the confessions, the edges of that lined with more of the phrase.

"This can't be Kyoya's," Haruhi muttered, her brow furrowing in confusion. Shrugging, she tossed the paper in the trash, passing it off as written by one of Tamaki's more obsessed clients. "Can't have been very important, anyway."

Five minutes later found Haruhi jogging down the pavement from Ouran, clutching her shoulder bag in one hand. The lost notebook she gripped in her other hand. Kyoya didn't often take a limo back to his mansion, and Haruhi hoped this was one day he'd gone with his usual mode of transport. To her relief, she soon saw him walking ahead of her.

Haruhi called out his name, waving his notebook above her head for him to clearly see. Kyoya stopped and turned around as Haruhi neared, his face contorting in horror when his eyes landed on the black notebook his her hand. It slipped into curious surprise so fast Haruhi concluded she imagined the previous expression.

Once Haruhi caught up with him, she breathlessly explained he had left his notebook in the club room, and he took it with a polite thank you.

"I was worried for a moment there, that you needed it to prepare for tomorrow or something. That notebook doesn't have anything important you need for tonight, right?"

Kyoya let a soft smile grace his visage at her good-natured worry. "No," he assured her, "Nothing important."

* * *

Usotsuki: A liar


End file.
